The Perennial Boyfriend
by Lizzy Lovegood
Summary: Rose can't even remember why she wanted to throw this stupid party. She's in a too-tight dress and heels she can barely walk in while John Noble stands there, calm and collected, a blonde model on his arm. A (belated) Christmas secretly-dating AU.


**A/N:** This was written for some "secretly dating AU" prompts I saw on Tumblr a while back. Hope you enjoy. :)

 **. . .**

 **The Perennial Boyfriend**

Rose isn't even drunk and she already can't remember why she suggested this stupid party. No one cares that this is her first Christmas in the city or that this is the first month she hasn't had to scramble to pay her half of the rent - God bless holiday hours. All most of them showed up fo was the free booze and the chance to swap spit with someone who will consent to being a human-shaped heater and booty call for the next few chill months.

If that isn't romantic, Rose doesn't know what is. She glares at the nearest sprig of mistletoe; they're spaced every few meters, hung by Rose herself in a brief fit of holiday spirit. Now they're just a reminder to every unattached (and more-than-possibly still bitter) pair of lips that there's a whole flat-ful of eager and willing participants.

" _You're sure?"_

"' _Course I'm sure. We have to keep our cover, don't we?"_

Donna has to say her name twice before Rose notices the second glass of spiked eggnog in her hand. She takes it gratefully, downing half in one long gulp.

"Having fun?"

"Yeah, yeah. This is great." Rose hopes her smile doesn't look too forced and takes a second, more conservative sip. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Donna's reindeer antlers jingle in exasperation as she shakes her head. "You and John, I swear. _I'm always alright_ ," she mimics in uncanny imitation of her brother's supercilious tone, "and then _you_. You're sure it's you two who aren't related?"

Rose snorts into her drink.

"Worth a shot." Donna shrugs. "Mum'd probably like you better, anyway. She's always comparing us. How much more _serious_ John is, how much more _career-oriented_."

Of late, Rose hasn't joined in on conversations like this and just lets Donna vent. Tonight, she could care less; if Donna suggested he was a mad scientist bent on taking over the world, she would wholeheartedly agree.

" _Aren't you tired of hiding it?"_

" _We'll wait 'til the new year. Less drama around the hols."_

"At least _we_ know how to have a good time."

"Exactly! You know he'd be holed up at the university till dawn if I hadn't invited him. _That's_ his idea of a fun Friday night."

"Would've been better off there," Rose grumbles. Better his tiny lab than their tinier sitting room, flirting with some statuesque blonde who laughs at everything he says and runs her French-manicured nails possessively down his suit jacket while Rose stands here in a too-tight dress she never lost the weight for and heels she keeps stumbling in.

"He's my brother, Rose, not the Antichrist." As much as they might argue, Donna and John were siblings above all else and, by unspoken agreement, the only ones allowed to make fun of each other. Anyone else, Rose included, could only bolster the mocking with their own bit of careful encouragement.

Donna liked to joke that it had been a clause in the lease agreement but Donna had also helped her move box after box into their third-floor flat (and enlisted Jack and Ianto's help with the vanity Rose couldn't stand parting with); she had helped out when Rose could manage the rent but came up short on her phone bill and had kept her from drunk-dialing Jimmy more times than Rose was proud of.

" _You're worth the drama. I can handle it. It's fine."_

" _No, it's not."_

It was more than Donna's right, Rose figured, it was her _due_.

Donna doesn't wait for an apology. "Look, I know you're not his biggest fan. Just . . . don't spend the whole night glaring at him, alright? Get in the holiday spirit, snog one of Jack's mates. Plenty of mistletoe to go around."

Rose nods, distant - they're handsome blokes - growing slowly more decisive - in denims and ugly Christmas jumpers that don't take away from their toned biceps and tight bums that she wouldn't kick out of bed.

" _Why not?"_

" _Because - because . . ."_

"Yeah," she agrees. "Yeah, alright."

"I know Owen's been eyeing you." When Rose doesn't answer, she adds, "Black hair. Reindeer jumper."

Sucking in her gut and tottering less in her heels than she has all night, Rose heads for the man Donna called Owen. He smiles at her and she smiles back, wiggling her fingers in flirty greeting. If she happens to accidentally elbow John on her way past then that's just fine, too.

"'Scuse you." He turns to her, eyes narrowed; the blonde tightens her hold on his arm. Up close, Rose recognizes her as one of the history TAs at the university.

"Oh," says Rose. She makes a show of looking them up and down, expression vacant. "Sorry."

"You should be more careful. You could've hurt someone."

Rose rolls her eyes. Well-aware of Donna lingering in the doorway, she limits her response to, "I'll bear that in mind."

"Thank you." Clinically courteous as ever, the note of gratitude Rose imagines she hears is lost a second later. He must be reluctant to start something with Donna, too.

Owen has been watching the exchange curiously and Rose smiles and shakes her head before rolling her eyes, once again, in John's direction. She's preparing how to explain all about Donna's dorky brother (and why they _shouldn't_ spend the night discussing him when there's so many fine topics of conversation in the bedroom down the hall) when John blurts out:

"That's it?"

"That's _what_?" asks Rose. She could kick herself for the way her voice goes shrill, an admittance of emotion, and John stands there, calm and collected, left eyebrow arched.

"You're not going to apologize?"

"Just drop it," Donna sighs from the sidelines. They both ignore her.

"I did," she reminds him.

"It didn't sound like one."

"Johnny, it's fine." Another caress of those perfectly-sculpted nails and sleek blonde hair just skimming his shoulder. John brushes both away. He hates being called _Johnny_.

"You were extremely rude to Jeannine and myself. We deserve an apology. A real one."

Rose wonders if it's possible for eye sockets to get sore. "Fine. I'm sorry for breaking up what I'm sure would have been a very meaningful one-night stand."

Jeannine doesn't look ashamed in the least, Rose has to give her that, but John's jaw is clenched. Freckles standing out like warning signals against his pale face, Rose half-expects steam to come pouring out of his ears.

"Well, you'd know all about those, wouldn't you?" is what he settles on and it's Rose's turn to flinch. She wishes the floor would swallow her whole, not to escape the judgment of the crowd - Jimmy's humiliated her worse, loads of times - but the lack of it in one. As if there's no bruise on his bum where he landed hard in a snowbank while scaling down the drainpipe and they didn't laugh themselves sick about it the next night, shushing each other every time they heard a car in the drive so Donna didn't hear this night's new conquest and recognize the voice of her brother.

But that's all he's made himself into, hasn't he? Not one strange individual but so many individual strangers, none of them sore or jealous that Rose has moved on because he has, too. In time with the changing of the seasons, it's time to find another human-shaped heater to warm the cool side of the mattress.

(Although he might have chosen a bedmate with a bit more padding than Jeannine.)

When Rose laughs to herself, it comes out wavering and watery and John sighs her name. He sounds exasperated, just the way he had yesterday when she couldn't come up with anything besides _because_ and she couldn't take how he forced that half-smile and said _alright_ so she ran, hoping against hope that they'd make up, in some subtle way, at the party.

She hadn't counted on Jeannine and her French talons or Owen and his reindeer jumper or John not giving one shite who might spend the night in her bed when, for three months, it had been him.

Rose's heels are at least two inches shorter than Jeannine's but when Donna links their arms, pulling her back, she trips over the braided edge of the rug. One of Jack's friends snorts, she can't tell who.

"Oi!" Donna snaps her fingers at the culprit - another nameless, handsome face. "I'd like to see you walk in these!"

"I can!" Jack volunteers. He sashays around the room, the world's most flamboyant Cinderella, inspecting stilettos for the most risque pair to be found.

Rose doesn't have long to feel relief. John has lost Jeannine - and her pink pumps - to Jack's ongoing debate so Donna has no trouble staring him down till he joins them in the kitchen, head hanging.

There's an old Polaroid of John, caught red-handed performing impromptu surgery on her Barbie dolls, that Donna likes to show off whenever the opportunity for humiliation is ripe. His eyes are wide, his right hand blurred in the motion it takes to comb nervously through his hair. as it moves to comb nervously through his hair. Nearly twenty years have passed since the taking of that photograph but, when Rose glances back at him, trailing after them down the corridor and into Donna's empty bedroom, she sees that seven-year-old boy again.

It's almost enough to make her feel bad.

"Right." Hands on her hips, Donna presents more of an obstacle than the closed door behind her. "I love the crap out of both you numpties but you need to get over yourselves."

"Oi! He-"

" _Donna_ . . ."

"Buh-buh-buh." She brings her fingers and thumb together to shush them. "So you don't like each other. So what? You're adults! Nerys is out there but you don't see me at her throat."

No. She prefers subtler methods.

"Well, straight for the jugular's too obvious, innit?" Rose purses her lips to hide the tongue-touched grin that has become second nature, a reward for his witticisms.

"Sort it out," says Donna. "If not for yourselves then for me, 'cause I'm not letting you out till you're ready to play nice. And I snore. Loud." She turns the knob, the muffled noise of the party grows sharper, then shuts it again with her on the opposite side this time.

"Does it lock from the outside?" asks John.

"No," says Rose, "but you know she'll be patrolling." Jack, too, once he'd strutted his stuff. "So we better make this believable before your friend leaves."

"I wasn't going to go home with her, Rose."

"See?" Carefully avoiding his eyes - not too hard with the way he's studying the skirting board - Rose sits down on the bed. "I'm feeling better already."

"I'm serious."

"Alright."

She can hear him frowning. "She caught me on my way out the door and asked me out. I told her I already had plans tonight and she asked what they were so I told her. I thought she wouldn't want to come since she wouldn't know anyone."

"Except you."

" _Well_ . . ." From the corner of her eye, Rose notices the tips of his ears going pink. She hides a smile behind her hand. "She was very . . . persuasive."

Quick as it came, the smile slips off her face, in its' place a smirk that pretends to share the joke. "I'll bet."

"No!" The flush has spread to his cheeks. "That is - I mean . . . _pushy_. Not that I - _we_ didn't . . ."

"It's fine." Rose waves a hand, barking her knuckles on the night-table. "I overreacted." Keeping her back firmly to him, she bounces up from the bed with more pep than she feels, ready to head back to the party with its mistletoe and spiked eggnog and forgettably handsome faces. Most of all the noise that can drown out John's inane flirting, oblivious explanations, and the way he says her name.

"Rose, I would never cheat."

Whether it's that first word or the ones that come after it Rose doesn't know but she releases the doorknob as if shocked by an electric current and when she swings around to face him, her hand is still held aloft. She wants to slap him but he already looks so satisfied at wresting a genuine response from her that she doesn't want to add to it.

"So what?" she hisses. "You rub the girl you _could_ have in my face just so I come crawling back to you? Just so I remember how bloody _lucky_ I am to have you?"

"If anything it would be the other way around," he says but Rose won't be taken in by that, either. She gave Jimmy all the second chances in the world, and all for doing nothing but reminding her, softly and soppily with a box of chocolates or a bouquet of her namesake, that he didn't deserve her. Before she knew it, Rose would be falling back into bed with him, determined to do anything and everything to keep the man who professed not to be good enough for her anyway.

"Nice try," she snorts. "At least I believed the first one. You're not a cheater, just a manipulative arsehole."

"Oh, for Christ's-" John runs a hand over his face, squeezing the bridge of his nose on the way past as though to ward off a headache. "It was one argument, Rose. The whole reason I came to this bloody thing was because I wanted to make up. Discreetly!"

"And I was a whole thirty seconds walk away," Rose finishes for him, hand held over her heart. "A real trek, that. You might've died of dysentery on the way over."

"You've been glued to Donna's side since I got here," he retorts, more than a bit testily. "Seeing as her knowledge - or lack thereof - of our relationship was the reason for our first fight, I thought I'd wait a bit rather than dragging you off on some pretense that someone might listen in on."

"And just flirt with What's-Her-Face in the meantime." Rose is surprised when he doesn't correct her on the name.

" _She_ was flirting with _me_. Also, she has a very strong grip," he adds, a bit sheepishly.

"So the fact that she was beautiful had nothing to do with it?"

" _You're_ beautiful."

"Shut up." Rose hates that her heart is in her throat.

"You are, though. You know you are."

"Stop trying to distract me."

"I'm not! It has everything to do with the situation at hand. Even when you're glaring daggers at me like tonight, you're still ten times more beautiful than ten - ten What's-Her-Faces." He raises his left eyebrow, quirks the right side of his mouth, inviting her to share the joke.

"Shut up," she says again, but it's with the last dredges of annoyance - a tone she learned from her mum whom John only knew enough about to be wary of - with no real ire to it anymore.

"I wasn't trying to hurt you, Rose," he says, and she finds herself warming to the reassurance. "What threw me for a loop was when you started putting on the moves for that other bloke. The one in the Rudolph jumper."

Rose recognizes that high-and-mighty tone, eschewing all wardrobe choices that are not pinstriped suits and Converse - ugly Christmas sweaters worn by romantic rivals in particular.

"His name's Owen," she says.

"Owen, then. I didn't handle it well and I certainly shouldn't have said those things, but I was hurt."

"You think I wasn't?" Rose argues, resentment rushing back. "Far as I knew, you were pulling the same stunt. Pardon me if I wasn't privy to your master plan, _Doctah_ Noble. Us shop girls can be a bit slow on the uptake, y'see."

"Nice try," John parrots back at her, a close imitation of her imitation of a thick cockney accent. "You know you mean more to me than that."

"Do I?"

She knows. Of course she knows.

Rose can't make heads or tails of his bedtime reading which he leaves on the night table in favor of tabloid quizzes on which flavor of cookie he is (snickerdoodle, for the record; she's chocolate-chip). Mousse and hair gel, none of them hers, jostle for a place on his bathroom vanity and he will wake up early to apply them only to turn it back into bedhead when he spoons up behind her, leaning gratefully into her ruffling fingers. Rarely has Rose seen him admit to being wrong - even with Donna, he waits till she is out of earshot - but here he is, caught in the closest to an apology he will ever come.

"I am sorry, Rose."

Or not.

"Me, too," She believes it just like he must believe it. But apologies don't mean shite if it's all going to happen again.

"Is this how it'll be?" she asks. "You get mad at me or I get mad at you and we both try to hurt the other one worse?"

"No." John shakes his head, emphatic. He clasps his hands behind his back in makeshift cuffs to prevent them from reaching for her, running his thumb along her knuckles till she calms. "Rose, no. Of course not." This is just the beginning, there's bound to be a - a few kinks. We'll work them out."

"What if we don't?" Even focused on the wall's peeling white she can't fail to notice the worried furrows that form on his brow. "What if is just gets worse?" she explains.

This doesn't help.

"Why would it get worse?"

"Because - 'cause we . . ." The words are too thick for her throat, choking her and she knows if she runs this time, forces a smile for Donna and the rest, he'll say it's _alright_ again even when it's not.

"Rose?"

That's what will break them - if what she's about to say doesn't.

"'Cause it's happened before." She holds up a hand to preclude any interruption other than the strangled and unintelligible noise - like someone who's had the wind knocked out of them - when she tacks on, "I've been hurt before.

"It was a couple years ago," says Rose. Her heart is pounding in her throat but at least she can breathe. It's easier, she finds, if she pretended sixteen-year-old Rose was a separate entity, the lost years a story she heard in passing. "He was a - well, he called himself a musician. I went to all his shows and he wrote all these songs for me, said they were dedicated to me. He said he'd never felt this way about anyone." John doesn't ask if she believed him. Of course she did.

"He was a couple years older than me and already had his own place. After a couple months he asked me to move in with him, so I did," she says in a monotone. "I quit school and left my mum and stepdad behind. They were angry but they took me back after things went bad."

John's clasped hands pendulum back and forth behind him now, barely missing smacking the window frame. She knows he's trying to be patient, something that's never come naturally to him.

"Bad how?" he asks when the silence stretches too taut.

Rose shrugs. "He stopped loving me. Or stopped pretending to love me, I dunno." Her mum had made her see a therapist but Rose had stopped going after three sessions. "His music wasn't making any money so he got angry more. He drank more. He would cheat on me and tell me those girls believed in him. Then he would say sorry."

John flinches.

It took six months for Rose to leave him the first time and a week for her to come back. Leaving got harder with each consecutive time - a half-dozen in all - and accepting his embrace and empty promises got easier. They were in love and part of being in love was getting hurt.

"He never hit me," says Rose at some point in the retelling. From the worry lines that bracket John's eyes and mouth, it feels like she should.

She doesn't say how he never needed to. He might make threats, but they were all idle things he said while plastered. Just the fear that he would leave her was enough and, really, would it kill her to be a bit more supportive? He wasn't asking for a lot and no one else would keep a girl around this long who hadn't even earned her A-levels.

Between them, John is the more talkative, a bizarre fact on the tip of his tongue for any situation. He has a very soothing voice; on nights where sleep has eluded her, Rose asks him to read to her, her ear to the phone or her head resting on his chest. This time, though, it's her story to tell and John limits his interjections to gentle nudging when she stalls and swallows.

At some point he must abandon his self-made shackles and his hand squeezes her shoulder, guiding her back to sit on one end of the bed while he takes the other. At another point, and another, and another, they inch slowly closer to each other, coming to rest with hands entwined between them and his nose in her hair.

Finally, she's finished. Her throat is hoarse. The pitcher of ice water, or maybe something stronger, is calling her name.

"Do you-" she asks.

"Why didn't . . ." says John.

"Sorry, go ahead."

"No, that's alright. You go."

"Oh, er . . . I was just going to get a drink," says Rose lamely. "Did you want anything?"

"Oh. No, I'm alright. Is Donna still out there, do you think?"

"Maybe. We worked it out though, didn't we?"

"Yep." Reluctantly, he shifts away from her, lets her grasp his thigh to pull herself up. "Does Donna know?"

"Yeah. I told her when I first moved in. I asked her not to tell anyone."

"Why?"

"Not many people know."

"Why didn't I?"

"I dunno. 'S not exactly something you tell your secret three-month boyfriend, is it?" Purposefully, she uses the term to bait him - he considers both _boyfriend_ , and its' female counterpart, sophomoric and best suited to secondary school - but he ignores it completely.

"Why not?"

"I dunno," she says again, racking her brain for a reason. "I dated my mate, Mickey, for a little while after. He'd met Jimmy . . ."

"That was his name?"

"Yeah, sorry, thought I said. Anyway, he overanalyzed everything, was afraid to say _boo_ in front of me. Like I was this - this vase or something. And you, you're a scientist. Your whole job is hypotheses and conclusions . . . I'd rather be your girlfriend than a test subject."

She's afraid she's hurt him at first till John nods, conceding her point. "Are you still?"

"What?"

"My girlfriend." He doesn't stumble over the word, is smiling hopefully at her. "Secret or not."

Rose smiles back at him, that full tongue-touched smile. "What if I choose _not_?"

"Then we can go out and tell Donna right now. Or, if you'd like, we can go out there and pretend to have made up and I can scale the drainpipe tonight. There'll be no more Jeannines. No more reindeer jumper boys, either, I hope."

"No," agrees Rose.

"I can't always be perfect, Rose," he says.. "No one is. But I'm here for as long as you'll have me." Then, "However you'll have me," and he waggles his eyebrows.

Rose laughs. In answer, she takes his hand, walking backwards towards the door.

"Let's go, Secret Boyfriend!" she calls loudly so that Donna can't fail to hear.

"What?" she screeches. Jack is hot at her heels.

 **.** **.** **.**

"Ten quid," Donna holds out her empty hand to Jack, palm up and fingers wiggling. She pours what remains of the spiked eggnog into her glass; her throat is sore from all the shrieking and squealing.

Jack thumbs through his wallet, glacially slow. "You know I'm as happy as the next gay that they stopped dicking around."

"Ten quid."

"And much as it pains me to admit, it's 12:31 right now so their big reveal wasn't _tonight_ \- technically last night, now - but in the early hours of the next morning. This morning . . ."

Donna rolls her eyes. "Everyone knew about it by ten, anyway. Even Owen."

"You're lucky I'm so generous of heart and won't exact the ten quid that I am owed."

"Ianto?"

"Jack, pay up."

"Fine, fine." Donna's hand closes triumphantly over a ten-pound note, her payment to Jeannine, worth every penny.

"Double-or-nothing for when he proposes?" asks Jack.

"You're on."


End file.
